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WPB Police Chief Demasi resigns

In a 3-sentence letter to City Administrator Jeffrey Green, dated Friday, Demasi said his last day would be May 4.

Demasi was not at Monday’s city commission meeting as it got underway. But Assistant Chief Bryan Kummerlen was in attendance, and confirmed he will be interim chief.

Demasi (city of WPB)

West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio said near the end of Monday’s city commission meeting that, when Demasi informed her on Friday, “I was as surprised as you are.”

She said Demasi told her he will be undergoing some medical procedures — she did not what — and told her he felt this was a good time to retire.

She said she had hoped Demasi would stay for another 10 or 15 years.

“This is not something I asked for, not something I wished for, not something, I want,” she said

Muoio said she intends to promote from within and will bring her recommendation to the city for ratification.

“He has done an amazing job as chief,” Muoio said. “I believe he has enjoyed working here.”

Commissioner Moffett said Demasi is “leaving the department in very good hands,” adding, “we’ll be fine.”

In June 2012, Demasi, retired as an assistant police chief in Cincinnati and was hired by Muoio, following a national search. Demasi had spent 37 years at the Cincinnati department, starting as a cadet.

When Muoio had run for mayor in 2011, she had cited low morale in the police department as a reason to replace Chief Delsa Bush. Bush resigned in October 2011 after a public spat with the mayor over a police radio system that Bush advocated but Muoio did not support.

Demasi was hired at $140,000 a year. He was the first outsider to run the West Palm Beach department since Billy Riggs was hired from Miami 25 years earlier.

Last summer, Demasi applied for the chief’s job in his hometown of Cincinnati. He’d said he wanted to be closer to family, including his children and his ill, 85-year-old father, who later died.

He later withdrew or failed to make the cut — “a little of both”, Muoio said then.

At the time, Demasi wrote on the city’s website, “I am not going anywhere. I intend to retire here in West Palm Beach.”